Illustration by Ryan Greis
You might think the waters of Lake Saint Louis make for some pretty smooth sailing, but once a year, the balmy shores are infested by a raft of fresh young buccaneers who commandeer the sea and harass the locals.
The fifth annual Lake Saint Louis Sailing Club Pirate Party, July 17 at 2 p.m., turns kids of all ages into treasure hunters who do battle with water weapons for supremacy over the bay. This year’s shiver-me-timbers shindig is part of the U.S. Junior Olympic Sailing Festival, held July 17 to 19.
Pearson Buell, pirate enthusiast and Sailing Club board member, explains that the club wanted to do something to attract kids to the hobby. So he created the Pirate Party, a treasure hunt on “Lake Sainte Louise,” a smaller portion of Lake Saint Louis. At the party, kids of all ages and experience levels take to sailboats, surfboards, canoes, and kayaks to find floating clues leading to a “dead man’s chest” of toys. The clues are protected by zealous crews of parents dressed in pirate garb. The adults shoot water cannons at the kids from their own boats (which fly the Jolly Roger), and the kids return fire with water balloons and squirt guns. If it sounds like great fun, well, it is.
“We encourage them to talk like pirates for the entire day,” adds Buell. And sure, it’s a romantic view of piracy, he says, but it works.
“I know the history of pirates, and they don’t deserve a good name,” he admits. “What’s happening in Somalia makes you think twice. We toyed with making it the ‘Viking Party,’ but they have their issues, too. We just want to dress funny and use terms like ‘arr’ and ‘matey.’”
